[Geotools-devel] FeatureType equality (and troubles in JDBC land)

[Andrea A. <aa...@op...>]

Hi all,
I have a few questions about a bug I've spotted in JDBC land.

First thing is, why are there two ways to compare FeatureTypes for 
equality?
The first one is FeatureType.equals(xxx), the second one is 
DataUtilities.compare(ft1, ft2).
Some places use the first, others the second, maybe in the same
algorithm (bad idea...).

Second, why DefaultAttributeType.equals(...) does not take into
account the restriction when evaluating equality?

Finally, the bug. If I invoke getFeatureReader(FeatureType 
requestedType, Filter filter, Transaction t) on a JDBC data store
and requestedType is a subset of the datastore's schema, I'm
guaranteed to get an exception from the ReTypeFeatureReader,
since the method builds a query that already extracts the
requested attributes but... there is a but in my opinion.

What if the requested type had different restrictions on attributes?
Would it be ok to return a feature reader sporting a feature type
that's different (restrictions wise) from the one requested?
Depending on the application, the answer may well be no, because
the coder expects restrictions to operate on the returned features
as requested, no?

Cheers
Andrea

PS: PostgisDataStore overwrites the method inherited from 
JDBC1DataStore, yet it does not seem to make any significant
change to it, seems more like an unmantained copy than something
with a purpose.